Expanding the Role of Levels of Personality Functioning in Personality Disorder Taxonomy: Commentary on "Criterion A of the AMPD in HiTOP".

The Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD) construes personality disorder diagnosis in terms of levels of personality functioning (LPF) as well as dimensions of pathological personality traits. The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP), which offers a comprehensive framework for conceptualizing psychopathology, integrates pathological personality traits into a model for understanding different disorders, deficits, and personality problems. Widiger et al. ( 2018 ) placed LPF within the HiTOP model, suggesting that LPF might already be subsumed by trait dimensions and other spectra representing severity of psychopathology. This commentary raises a number of questions about their underlying assumptions, and advocates for an expanded role for LPF to more fully capture the complexity and instability inherent in personality disorder pathology.